Micello Blog: Indoor Cartography

In 2010 Westfield took the initial steps toward building an online shopping experience for their Australian shopping malls. Online shopping had been around for quite some time, and while the brick-and-mortar shopping community clung to their parking lots and paper coupons, Westfield was making bigger plans that integrated mobile technology most of their customers already used. Initially over 100 retailers signed up for the pilot project with more and more beginning to sign up over time, and it seemed as though Westfield truly saw the value in helping their retailers engage customers both in-store and online.

However, the story does not end here.

Fast forward nearly 3 years later and Westfield launches another big announcement that will again leave the indoor community asking, “whats next?”

Westfield Labs, which launched in 2012 as Westfield’s technology entity is the Silicon Valley solution that bridged the gap between brick-and-mortar shopping and online.

Just last year Westfield labs launched an awesome new tool that allows guests to find browse through a large assortment of products, locate the retailers who sell the item, and even discover new savings for their favorite stores.

Don’t take my word for it, watch this video Westfield made that will tell you all about it:

Westfield approached Micello with the idea of including an indoor mapping component that would allow their shoppers to find the products they had just searched for online. After all, what good is a searchable mall without some cool looking maps? We worked with Westfield to not only deliver some high quality maps, but also worked with them to ensure their data integration and map customizations ran like clockwork.

It’s worth noting what an awesome job the designers did in customizing the map. There is no doubt that if you’ve ever seen Micello’s default theme before, you will notice a huge difference in the design. We were very excited to see the extensive work their team has done as it displays the flexibility of our SDK very nicely.

For the last three years we've been working really hard to deliver the best indoor mapping platform the mapping community has to offer. We hope that with a simple, yet feature-rich SDK we make our developers happy. When we say that you can begin integrating maps into your application within minutes, we mean it.

Just a few lines of code is all you need to get started!

When someone signs up on Micello, we give them a DeveloperKey which gives them access to our Workbench site. This is where the magic happens. See that bit of code below? That’s about all you need to get started using our test maps. We even allow you to download this code and change the Community ID as well

Grab your API key.

You definitely want to make sure to grab that DeveloperKey because that is what you are going to use to begin accessing the cool maps on our platform. I’m sure you’re wondering where to get one of these babies. The good news is if you signed up on Micello.com, then you can find it highlighted in green on our developers page. If you haven’t signed up yet, what are you waiting for? http://www.micello.com/user/register. You can sign up to receive both an Android and JavaScript key. Oh, don’t forget to click that email validation!

Test on free maps.

You’re probably wondering how to get maps for free, right? Don’t be shy, we’ve heard it plenty of times. The good news is we give you a bunch of free maps. In fact there are over 60 maps that you have complete access to with your Developer Key right now! See that list below? We call this our Developer Maps list. You will find everything from shopping centers and airports, to office buildings and stadiums. Make sure to copy the ID number next to the map as this is the Community ID associated with this map. (http://www.micello.com/developer/maps)

Each object is unique.

Speaking of IDs, we love these things! It makes our lives easier and we like to think it makes your life easier as well. Everything about our maps is unique. From the elevators, stores, seats, products, all the way down to the individual parking spaces, everything gets an ID! This way you can customize every single object on the map with ease. See that tool below? This is our Interactive Map Tool that allows you to click on each individual object and find out every single ID associated with it. Pretty cool, right? (http://www.micello.com/developer/tools/maptool)

Grab the documentation.

And for those of you that can’t tell the difference between a Overlay ID and a Drawing ID, don’t sweat it. We’ve got you covered in our awesome documentation! (http://www.micello.com/developer/docs)

Customize the maps.

I know what you’re thinking. You want the maps to look awesome. You want the maps to look modern. You want the maps to look so sexy that your boss has to give you a raise! We get it. You’ll find all types of customizations that you can do. What are they? Let’s just say the list is too long for me to cover in this post. If you want to see you’ll have to visit the workbench. (http://www.micello.com/workbench)

Get support.

And if you ever get stuck, don’t freak out. We’ll be right there with you to help you every step of the way. We have an excellent support team that is standing by and ready to debug any code you choose to send our way. Via our developer forum or support@micello.com, we’d be glad to lend a helping hand.

API Health Checks.

Oh, and if you’re wondering if you can trust our platform to stay afloat and not sink when you’re about to set sail, then check out our status 24/7 and be assured that our platform is always ready to go! (http://www.micello.com/developer/status)

And besides, these guys seem to think we’re all right.

We’re really glad you are just as excited as indoor maps as we are. We’ve tried really hard to deliver a customizable mapping platform that you can do awesome things with. We are looking forward to seeing the awesome things you’re able to integrate with Micello’s SDK and are here if you need us.

For all of you soccer fans out there who may be venturing to Brazil this month to attend the World Cup, we thought it would be a great time to share with you our top picks for Brazilian indoor maps.

Micello first brought indoor maps to Brazil in early 2013 and, since then, we’ve seen an explosion of interest in these maps. As you enjoy watching some awesome soccer during the tournament, make sure to have these maps handy to find your way around indoors:

We’re very excited to share with all of you the details of the Sears Retail Hackathon coming up this weekend in New York. We’ll be offering a $500 cash prize for the Best use of Micello’s SDK. We hope all of you can join us this weekend because what better way to kick off the summer than to take home some cash, win a partnership with Sears and hack for a weekend!

We’re going to make 100 Sears and Kmart store maps available on our API for hackers to build an awesome working prototype. Sears is issuing the challenge to all worthy hackers who think they have what it takes to wow them. We’re hoping you can wow us as well!

We’re including the details of the event below. Just for fun, we’ll throw in some examples of how our customers are using Micello to help spark your creativity!

Make sure to also check out Sears’ other API partners before the competition starts to enhance your app!

Here are the challenges:

Target Area: Ratings and Reviews

Rating and reviews drive customer decisions and purchases every day. How does Sears Holdings Corporation increase the number of reviews on its sites? What is the next evolution of Ratings & Reviews? How can Sears make it easier for customers to get product advice to make informed purchasing decisions?

Target Area: Baby Category

Sears Holdings Corporation has an incredibly strong lineup of baby products with everything from baby furniture and strollers to health and safety devices to clothes and toys. How could Sears get more customers who are known to shop for baby online and mobile with various retailers, to shop for baby products on sears.com? How can we build more awareness of our great online baby assortment?

The sale may end once the customer purchases, but it is just the beginning of the relationship with Sears Holdings Corporation. Regardless of the product purchased, how can technology help Sears give a great post-purchase experience and help them to continue to engage with their members in a valuable way and ultimately, get them to recommend Sears to their friends.

Target Area: Sears PartsDirect

Sears PartsDirect has a catalog of over 7 million replacement parts and accessories including lawn and garden equipment, kitchen appliances, and other household items. How can we use social and/or mobile technology to get people to buy all their replacement parts and accessories from Sears, regardless of whether they bought an appliance directly from a manufacturer or from another retailer? Using this catalog, can you create a digital experience or technology that will help Sears discover and target anyone needing a replacement part or accessory?

Who: Early-stage startups or devs (Android, iOS, etc.) -- Sears Holdings Corporation (Sears, Kmart, ShopYourWay.com), one of the largest retailers in the US, wants to innovate, and they’re looking for fresh ideas and potential partners to introduce at their retail stores and to their national customer base.

What: Sears presents their business problems; companies (startups) and individuals (devs) create solutions or expand upon their own existing ones over an intense weekend of coding (platform agnostic but Android solutions especially welcome). Early-stage startups and devs can compete to win top prizes. Sears wants to discover you or your startup and explore how they can build working relationships and partnerships with the smartest minds on the East Coast.

How: Register as an individual (dev) or company (startup). Create a new project or build on existing products and projects - the code does not need to be fresh and new. You keep all intellectual property. Participants must only present a working demo of the product to the judges on the final day that applies to one of the challenge categories and integrates a Sears API.

Why Beyond the obvious top prizes, meet with top execs from Sears Holdings Corporation and demo your product to them. Test your ideas, receive feedback from industry experts, and see if you have what it takes to scale your technology to the next level. Startup winners have the opportunity to form a partnership with Sears and deliver their products to the brand’s vast customer base; devs can cash in their ideas without having to commit to supporting their products full time.

When: June 7-8, 2014, Reception June 5

Where: WeWork Soho Lounge, 154 Grand Street, New York, NY

Sharing: This is a social event. Feel free to talk about this evening using hashtag #SearsDevChallenge

From the mountains to the coast, there are hundreds of outlets and malls in North. Carolina. So much variety and to choose from, top designer cloths to some of the best foods in the state. Come on down and have a blast in North Carolina!!!

Luxor Las Vegas is a hotel and casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada. The 30-story hotel, owned and operated by MGM Resorts International, has a 120,000-square-foot casino with over 2,000 slot machines and 87 table games

With everything from charming small town shops to malls and outlets to high-end boutiques, make sure your travel plans in Nevada include shopping. Only in Nevada can you find cowboy boots to high heels and antiques to contemporary pieces all in one trip.

McCarran International Airport is the principal commercial airport serving Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada, United States. The airport is five miles south of downtown Las Vegas, in the unincorporated area of Paradise in Clark County.